Delicate Things
by Mitch82
Summary: Damon and Stefan work through their issues. Pre-vampire.


A/N: I wrote this over a year ago and forgot about it. But it makes me think I should start watching this show again. ;)

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Those humid summer evenings, rolling over dirt and wild grass as the dense trees stared indifferently down upon them, Katherine's legs wrapped tightly around Damon's waist as he thrust deeply in. Her dress pulled up around her torso, his pants still hanging around his ankles, kept in place by the large boots still on his feet. It was always that way, their passion so intense that they could barely wait to get alone before they began to maul each other with unseemly kisses and forceful advances.

And every time, Stefan followed. He stood several yards away in the trees, and he watched. He knew from the beginning about Damon and Katherine's secret affair. He never said anything. He never even hinted to Damon what he witnessed on those muggy nights in the woods. But Damon didn't mind.

Ever the showman, Damon was pleased at the thought of a captive audience to his debauchery. And his sense of sibling rivalry was especially stimulated with the idea that Stefan was in love with Katherine, and to see her so defiled by his own brother must have been agony for him.

But one evening in late August, Katherine, little vixen that she was, had pulled out a bottle of Absinthe, and everything spun out of control from there. After making grand fools of themselves at a party held in her name, they had loped into the woods like bunnies in heat. By the time they got to their favorite love making place, Katharine had broken a heel on one of her white shoes, had torn the strap on the other, and Damon had a dark red line of blood on his temple from a jagged tree branch he had scraped past.

In the middle of a particularly creative sexual position, if he did say so himself, Damon decided to silently acknowledge Stefan's presence. He turned to look Stefan square in the eye, his hips never losing their perfect pounding rhythm, his lips shifting into his trademark self-satisfied smirk. But his mouth froze when he saw the look in Stefan's eyes.

Not anger. Not jealousy. Not even sadness.

Adoration.

Stefan was staring at Damon's body, studying it, worshipping it, mentally caressing it. It seemed as though he didn't even notice Katherine was there. His eyebrows still and level, his eyes open wide, his lips soft and untroubled. The bluish light of the moon illuminated Stefan's features, bringing out the childlike innocence in his expression, the boyish curiosity that up to that point hadn't been stamped out of him through decades upon decades of endless life. These were younger days, before the Salvatore brothers had been made immortal, back when they were just two human boys whose hearts didn't depend upon outside sources of blood to keep pumping.

Damon's heart pounded a little faster as he took in his brother's attention. Stefan's gaze moved from Damon's thick muscular legs, to his clenching and unclenching butt, up his broad, sweat-shined back. Damon arched like a stretching cat to accentuate his muscularity, and he heard a soft scratching sound as Stefan gripped the bark of the tree he stood behind.

Damon began to up the game even more, thrusting his hips more vigorously, moaning loudly as he did so, perhaps in an attempt to stir Stefan, to force him to say or do something. In all of these months thinking that Stefan was jealous of him, it was becoming clear that he was actually jealous of _Katherine._

As far as Damon was concerned, the raised stakes of this game made it even more fun.

And yet, in spite of his theatrics, Stefan remained still and solid. No hint of jealousy crossed his face, no trace of manifest unhappiness at all. Worshipful silence was all he offered. _I will always follow you,_ his eyes seemed to say.

Eye contact full of unwavering devotion like a vice grip cinched over his heart, and Damon was suddenly bucking the waves of orgasm. Katherine shrieked with delight beneath him, but all he could hear was the beating of his own heart.

He collapsed on her breast. She whispered delicate things into his hair, and his eyelids drooped with post coital drowsiness as he kept his soft gaze on Stefan's moonlit face. Stefan leaned his cheek against his tree trunk and kept watch over his brother with such intense gentleness. _I will always follow you._

Damon drifted in and out of a dream that it was Stefan's hand now running through his hair, Stefan's lips now caressing his ear softly with warm words of devotion and love. In this dream, there was no sibling rivalry, no competition. In this dream, they were equal, they were love.

It was a good dream.


End file.
